the ask@AAR: What stories make you ugly cry?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent the last year listening to the Harry Potter books. I am currently at the end of book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and have just sobbed my way through the death of a beloved character.
I also sobbed my way through the finale of the last season of Unforgotten. That too had a death that gutted me.
As I've grown older, I've become less interested in stories that truly break my heart. When I was younger, I loved weeping my way through the end of Call of the Wild, Beth's death in Little Women, the piercing horror of Sophie's Choice. But, since I had kids, I've found devastating tragedy in books harder to parse. (I am still furious about Prim's death. There was NO reason for that!)
However, there is still a part of me that loves a good ugly cry. Sometimes I even rewatch the season five finale of Buffy and reread the ending of The Amber Spyglass just to have a reason to bawl.
So, what are the stories that, in the best way, have made you ugly cry? And are any of them romances?
A book that makes me cry each time I read it – and I’ve read it more than once because it’s so beautifully written – is I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven. It’s a short book but the author paints the woodland setting so realistically and manages to make the characters fully 3-dimensional, flesh and blood people, so much so that I was devastated at the end even though I knew it was coming.
I also cried at the death of one of the dragons in the Naomi Novik Temeraire series. I don’t remember the poor dragon’s name, but he was sweet and kind and cruelly abused by his owner. His death scene was so touching and spurred many tears.
Also cried at Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Song for a Dark Queen (the story of Queen Boudica and her valiant but unsuccessful uprising against the Romans) and Sun Horse Moon Horse about the creation of the Uffington White Horse in Bronze Age Britain. Loved many of her books (one of the things I’m grateful for as a parent is that I discovered her through my children), but these are the two that I remember as ones with the saddest endings – although I nonetheless encourage everyone to read them.
I had a sister who died when I was five and someone gave our family that book. It’s actually a lovely book for those who are grieving. I’d also recommend, for those who are dealing with the loss of a love one, the album Sand and Water by Beth Nielsen Chapman. It’s amazing.
I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your sister. Even though it happened a long time ago, I’m sure it had a big impact on you — 5 is very young to realize the fragility of life.
Thank you. In some ways, it was very freeing. I’m a lot less terrified of death than I think I would have been had I not experienced death at such a young age.
I was reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin on my train commute home when I got to the part where the pet pine marten died and the tears came gushing forth. Fellow passengers were bewildered (we were all regulars on that line) but not so bewildered as I was at my reaction. Other passages in the book, like the shot down airmen attempting to speak to the locals in classical Greek had me laughing like an idiot. I expect my fellow commuters were pleased when I finished the damned book!!
I’m definitely a crier. I wouldn’t be able to write a list of all the books with scenes that made me cry but one I remember well was over Lover Unbound by JR Ward. I read it at a time I had just discovered the series, they were at their peak when it comes to hype and publishing between books wasn’t too long, so the stage was set. I remember it was a Saturday, so a relatively slow day at that time for me, and I cried and cried and cried, I think I even skipped lunch!
But I do cry over anything emotional, for instance even the music video for “Happier” by Marshmello and Bastille makes me cry…
That is a tear jerker!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Bc3pLyij0
Ugly uggly.ooogly cry ….
The Bronze Horseman.
OMG …
I startled my late husband when I burst out bawling at that one scene toward the end …
I had never done that before. And haven’t since.
Alexander Belov is a real hero.
Someday I will read that book.
Yes, Dabney, I have noticed that I have no tolerance for sad movies or books right now. So many children’s books have scenes that are designed to rip the heart out of them. You know the one about the spider and the pig. Its title slips my mind. “The Velveteen Rabbit.” When I was 9, I read “Ugly Joe,” I think it was, put out by the English SPCA. I think it was the first time I was told about docked ears on dogs. I tried to watch “Dumbo” five years ago, I got as far as the mother cradling Dumbo in her arms. “Old Yeller” traumatized whole generations. It wasn’t until recently that I thought, “What kind of mother allows her son to shoot the dog? Why didn’t she do it?” Oh, yeah. Because she was only a women. When I was in 8th grade, I saw the wonderful, sooo romantic “For Whom the Bell Tolls” with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman and even read the book. (Not nearly as good.) I thought I could watch it a million years later, but I sobbed at the ending. And don’t get me started on operas. Somehow, so many of the great romances end unhappily.
I, personally, hope that romances’ law of a happy ending never, ever get changed. That’s only one reason why I detest Nicolas Sparks who goes out of his way to disavow that he write romances. He’s right. He doesn’t. He doesn’t have the talent to write a romance. (Sorry if you love him, and that offends you. He’s a snob.)
I absolutely hate romances with a sad ending, be it because one of them dies, “it couldn’t be” or they don’t end up together. I detest it with my soul.
As a teenager, I furiously closed love triangle books where the unelected boy ended up sad and lonely for his whole life, or where one of the couple is ultimately revealed to have a fatal disease and dies, I believe in eternal life but I don’t want to read to the dead girl and the guy “waiting to see her again in the hereafter” uh no.
I have simply never been able to see how beautiful or inspiring in a romantic book that ends badly (in Spanish the HEA does not seem to be a requirement, there are some who end up sad, the new adults or juveniles are sometimes horribly tragic).
I remember reading Beautiful Joe. I cried so hard. Yes, I believe it was put out by the English SPCA. The book that still makes me teary-eyed even after teaching it several periods a day for many years to engrossed seventh graders is The Ousiders by SE Hinton. However, the winner of the Ugly Cry award goes to…drumroll please, Me before You by Jojo Moynes. I haven’t cried that hard since my mom died. I really try to avoid sad books. When my mother got sick, I couldn’t take anymore sad. I read romance for a happily ever after.
I made a conscious decision not to read the Moynes. I’m willing to sob my eyes out, upon occasion, for books. (I’m looking at you All the Light We Cannot See.) but they have to be something truly special.
Have you read A Dog of Flanders by Ouida? Whew!
Dabney, I listened to all the Harry Potter books in 2020, having already read the entire series 3 times, and even though I am a grown ass middle-aged woman, I ugly cried at the end of Book 6 of the Harry Potter series, and in a couple of places at the end of Book 8. Even though I know the story, I just can’t help it.
YA books can really get me going, perhaps because they are about young people trying to make their way, and everything is so new and so intense? Anyway, the Hunger Games got me, as did The Fault in Our Stars and so many others. I just finished Rainbow Rowell’s Simon Snow trilogy, and I blubbered like a baby.
Romance novels typically don’t make me cry, but Laura Kinsale’s Flowers From the Storm wrecked me. When Christian gave his big speech in the church at the end, struggling with every word, after all he’d been through, I just lost it.
I adore that speech.
I am not looking forward to the end of book eight simply because I think it has the worst death in the books
and the final scene is so moving.
I agree with both of those events. There were two others deaths that got me, too. And they weren’t even favorite characters for me, but they sacrificed themselves, and that got me. (I tried to do the spoiler thingy, but I didn’t do it right. You HP fans know who I mean.)
Absolutely agree on that death…….and I never weep.
I remember sobbing the first time I read Cry No More by Linda Howard (2003). Recently, I discovered I’m too sensitive to heartbreak in books when I started crying while reading the ending of Number the Stars by Lowry.
I’m not much of an ugly crier, but I will get choked up by a particularly moving scene (happy, sad or poignant). I’m more likely to be affected by animal death (or mistreatment) than people’s deaths. Occasionally, something will unexpectedly move me to tears, such as when my kids went through a phase of watching Toy Story 2. I would leave the room in tears every single time when it got to the scene with the Sarah Mclachlan song ‘When She Loved Me’.
Two children’s books that made me cry a little bit:
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech (grief over loss of a parent)
The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (animal abuse and found families of the animal kind)
My sobbing at the end of Toy Story 3 and Eight Below are legendary in my family.
I always cry when I read the children’s book I’ll Love You Forever by Robert Munsch. It explores the relationship between a mother and her child as they age.
There are certainly books that have made me cry but when I’m deliberately seeking out an emotional release? I watch Steel Magnolias. The cemetary scene between Dolly Parton, Sally Field, Olympia Dukakis, and Shirley MacLaine is just so perfect. . . . I laugh and cry through it every time.
Can’t think of a romance off-hand that does both . . . but After Ben by Con Riley and Tere Michael’s Faith and Fidelity each have at least one scene that usually brings me to tears (MCs who are grieving).
I have to disagree with you about Prim.
My bigger issue is with how Prim died. It felt, to me, like a baby bait and switch. I do, however, adore the last scene of the trilogy. I think Collins made her point beautifully.
Apart from just really sad stories, books where there is a terrible injustice will make me ugly cry every time. Even when I know the book is emotionally manipulating me I will still likely bawl over it.
Mary Balogh’s “A Precious Jewel” made me cry my eyes out even as my brain noted a bunch of plot problems and character decisions that made no sense.
The same with Susan Elizabeth Phillips book “Dream A Little Dream”. Some of it just felt unbelievably over the top nonsensical to me but it didn’t stop me from the ugly cry.
The worst combination for me is despair combined with “but that’s just not fair!!”
It’s funny, in Dream a Little Dream, Gabe is so depressed, it made me less depressed about his loss. That is an interesting book, however.
It’s so over the top- the heroine can’t even have shoes? If it were a 19th century story I might buy it, but 20th century? You can literally find cheap shoes for a dollar on clearance at Walmart. Or a thrift store. Everyone is so over the top awful to her (with the exception of a couple of people) and yet it makes me cry.
Truthfully, and it sounds mean, I didn’t think of the hero much at all. I didn’t like him or his brother from the get go.
I will say this for the book, I can’t say I really enjoyed it, but it certainly has stayed in my mind for much longer and generated more discussion from me than countless other books that were probably more enjoyable overall but ultimately forgettable.
The death of children is likely to get me sobbing. I can remember sitting there crying over the prologue to Loretta Chase’s THE LAST HELLION—young Charlie’s death.
God, yes – I was a wreck after the prologue in that one.
Kati Wilde’s N/A, GOING NOWHERE FAST, has an absolutely gutting break-up scene that extends over several days and many pages. Even though I know there will be an HEA, I always cry reading that scene. And Taylor Fitzpatrick’s THROWN OFF THE ICE—definitely not an HEA—I always cry at the last line of the last chapter before the epilogue.
WOLF by Albert Payson Terhune was my very first unhappy ending book…..then there was OLD YELLER, the movie. Gak! What the hell was Disney thinking! I’d never, ever revisit either. Crying just isn’t what I’m after, The last time I teared up was reading MRS. DREW PLAYS HER HAND by Carla Kelly when the stalwart housekeeper died. That was just enough to up the angst level without going over the edge and I truly love the book.
My husband still talks about seeing Old Yeller. Kids were so devastated!
For my husband, it was WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS. He read that to our girls and he couldn’t make it through the last page, he was crying so hard.
That was me reading A Bridge to Terabithia and Tuck Everlasting. I was sobbing so hard it worried my kids who were far more sanguine than I!
I know! Our girls were like, “It’s ok, Daddy.” I think as we get older and experience more losses, things like that affect us in a deeper way.
I love Walt Disney but that man was a sadist when it came to sad deaths.
Between Old Yeller, Bambi, Dumbo and countless other films more childhood tears have been shed.
I forgive Louisa May Alcott for killing off Beth as she was really just working through the death of her own beloved sister in the book.
The man almost created the dead mom syndrome.
There is something about animal/pet deaths that is just unbearable. Probably because of their devotion and vulnerability. I immediately think of my own wonderful pets.
I remember watching “Dances With Wolves” when it first came out and when the army shot at Two Socks the wolf I became enraged and merciless in the theater. Anyone attacking Two Socks needed to be destroyed!
Have you ever seen Eight Below? I am not sure I’ve ever cried harder in a film.
Eight Below is probably the only story that’s made me ugly cry.
I took my daughter and niece to see Eight Below, then to a promised lunch at a restaurant afterwards. I couldn’t stop crying, not just because of those dogs but because of others that have experienced something similar (trying to avoid spoilers). Public ugly crying is so embarrassing!
I’ve never had the courage to see it again. It just destroyed me.
No I haven’t and based on the comments I’m putting it on my “never watch” list. It would be masochistic of me to even attempt that one.